


Swiss Miss

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Will Graham, Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Food is Not People, Hot Chocolate, M/M, Murder Husbands, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5805796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why would you choose instant cocoa when chocolate is so readily available and easily melted?”</p><p>Will chuckles. “Beverly brought it over once when she came to check on me. You know. Before you sliced her neatly apart.”</p><p>And Hannibal suddenly <i>does</i> regret killing Beverly, if only because he can’t do it now for disgracing Will’s kitchen with eight packets from a ten-count box of Swiss Miss Hot Milk Chocolate.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Hannibal and Will have survived Mason Verger; whether or not they survive Swiss Miss—or even each other—remains to be seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swiss Miss

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are. Baby's first Hannigram fic. It was bound to happen eventually, considering how obsessed I am with these two deadly, dangerous, disgusting idiots. Anyway, this spawned spontaneously [over on twitter](https://twitter.com/lorimorimoto/status/690898055097356288) and then wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it instead of eating breakfast. Hannibal would be appalled.
> 
> Many thanks to Team Sassy Beta, otherwise known as [abrae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/pseuds/abrae/works), [betty days](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sadrobots/pseuds/betty%20days), and [Catchclaw](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw/works). I love you all so much that it's criminal. (Ha! See what I did there? I'm hilarious.)
> 
> Please do not repost/copy/duplicate this work to other sites. That's called theft.

Every snowflake is a marvel, a frozen testament to the passage of time. Each one is a unique crystalline drop of rain which, having been battered back and forth through varying layers of temperature and moisture, becomes a reflection of its own particular trauma. A snowflake is a story in and of itself, an aggregation of a microscopic whole, a particulate and complex prism.

Much like humanity, however, Hannibal finds they are little more than a nuisance when grouped together _ en masse _ .

He isn’t supposed to be here.

Hannibal has kept his promise to Alana—well, the key part to it, anyway; he can hardly visit his vengeance upon her now, snowbound as he is. Still, Will lies clean and safe and sound in his own bed, and Hannibal knows that faithful Chiyoh would help him leave even now. She has her own way of manipulating the universe in her favor, after all. Hannibal really has no doubt about her ability to change the weather on a whim, rescuing him in spite of the snow should she so choose.

But he remains here in Will’s living room, and Chiyoh has not deigned to intervene, as if she knows he would stay regardless of opportunity.

He sighs softly, staring at the high drifts of snow. Hannibal is still chilled from walking so many miles through the falling of the thermostat, cradling Will in his arms, continuing to do so in the back of Chiyoh’s stolen car. Every bit of his plan has fallen into place, from Mason’s kidnapping to now, having never doubted the intention of any of those he left changed. Hannibal had known Alana would scheme with Margot—so obvious and open, their mental ledgers to him. Likewise, he knew Jack would come hunting once lovely Bella had been eased into death.

Still, he is no meteorologist. Some things simply cannot be foreseen.

Hannibal pushes on the front door a bit though he is aware that it, like the back door, will not yield. The snow is already eighteen inches deep and it continues to fall. ”It’s a snowmageddon!” the irritating WTOP weatherman had practically shouted through the static of Will’s ancient radio.

This is hardly the end of the world. God will not drop His forgiveness today.

“You’re still here,” Will calls out blearily from the bed. Hannibal closes his eyes for a moment, committing the sound of his remarkable boy waking from a warm, restful, recovering sleep to memory.

“I was just musing on that,” he replies as he opens his eyes again.

Hannibal hears the rustle of the bedsheets as Will pulls himself out of bed, his limbs likely still a bit sluggish and numb from the paralytic Cordell had administered. Will pads his way over, socks clinging slightly with static to the floor. Hannibal catches a whiff of the hideous Irish Spring soap from the bath he gave Will while he slept.

“I could call Jack.”

Hannibal turns away from the door and the crisp white of the snow. “The phone lines are down.”

“Did you cut—”

“I did not.  The weather accomplished that for me.”

“Ah. So we’re stuck.”

“So it would seem.”

Will frowns, then squints as he reminds Hannibal, “I could use my cell.”

“I hardly think that Jack could make it here in these conditions were you to call.”

“True,” says Will, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t even know where the hell it is, anyway.”

“Likely still in Florence.”

“Shit,” he swears quietly. “So is my boat.”

They stare at each other in silence—comfortable, as Hannibal always is in any circumstance—before Will adds, “I would thank you if you hadn’t recently tried to kill me yourself.”

Hannibal shrugs. “It seemed the easiest way in which to forgive you.”

“What, to ingest me, make me a physical part of you if you couldn’t have me otherwise?”

“Naturally.”

Will shakes his head. “And you wonder why I sailed across the Atlantic to kill you.”

“No,” says Hannibal. “It was an expected retribution.”

“You murdered Abigail,” Will reminds him as he walks toward the chair in front of the fire.

“You betrayed my trust.”

“And you sent Randall Tier to murder  _ me _ .”

“After you delivered me into Matthew Brown’s hands from your prison cell.”

Will eases himself into the chair. “A cell which you put me in.”

“I really had no other choice. You were quite mad.”

“I wasn’t mad,” scoffs Will. “I had encephalitis, which you knew and did nothing for. So angry, after the fact, but not mad.”

Hannibal  _ hmms _ thoughtfully. “I had no obligation to inform you. You were not my patient, not truly, and I am not your keeper.”

“But you were my friend.”

“Aren’t I still?”

“Strangely enough,” Will says, albeit after a long pause, “yes.”

Hannibal crosses the room, his intent to stand over Will, loom over him like the great shadow he has made himself over his life, but surprises himself by kneeling in front of his chair instead. He is not penitent, he does not worship; it simply feels  _ right _ to look up at Will for once, at least in this moment. Hannibal files the feeling away to pick apart later, yielding to the urge for now.

“I regret Abigail’s death,” he begins, “but I will not apologize for the events that have led us here to this moment and to this  _ quid pro quo _ of our supposed misdeeds.”

Will cautiously reaches out, seeming to aim for Hannibal’s injured face before landing in his hair, which he cards through his fingers.  “She followed me to Italy, you know.”

“Did she?” Hannibal asks, betraying himself and leaning into Will’s touch.

“I asked her what might have happened, in some other world. Some time where we didn’t misunderstand each other, you and I.”

“We understand each other well enough now.”

Will scrunches his face, a strange cross between laughter and pain. “As...nice as that may be,” he says, having trouble choosing his words, “I think...I think I’d rather you were gone and she here.”

“Even now?”

“Especially now,” but he keeps stroking Hannibal’s hair with that same unreadable expression. “But I imagine we all would have wound up killing each other in the end, were she still here. Nothing would have truly changed.”

“I do miss her, Will,” Hannibal says truthfully. “I miss the family we could have had together. I miss the promise her life held. But I would miss this talk all the more. I would mourn the moments alone between her death and now that we would not have shared. I would cry for the loss of our becoming.”

“I don’t expect you to apologize, Hannibal. You are hardly a contrite man.”

The fire crackles beside them, but it is not warm enough to keep Will from shivering. Hannibal rises then, dislodging Will’s hand and his own slight emotional turmoil. “I believe a hot drink would not go amiss,” he tells him.

“If you can find something in there,” Will says, gesturing toward his kitchen, “you’re welcome to it.”

It’s a redundant statement, and Hannibal knows they are both aware, as he will make himself welcome to whatever he chooses.

But, as Hannibal stands in bewilderment in front of a mostly-empty cupboard, he is reminded that Will has much mastery over his choices. Will was right—he has changed Hannibal, after all, but not so much that he wouldn’t still be disgusted by what he sees.

“You have a half-chewed bag of discount ground coffee.”

“I haven’t exactly stayed here in awhile,” Will calls out from his chair. “Mice are to be expected, especially with my dogs elsewhere.”

“There is no tea.”

“I only drank tea with you.”

Hannibal blinks. “You have two cups of ramen noodles and a can of ravioli.”

“We mere mortals don’t always feel like making thirteen course meals, Hannibal.” A pause, and then, “I think there’s some instant cocoa in the cabinet over the stove.”

“Why would you choose instant cocoa when chocolate is so readily available and easily melted?”

Will chuckles. “Beverly brought it over once when she came to check on me.  You know. Before you had me committed and sliced her neatly apart.”

“You were the one who sent her into the lion’s den, as it were.”

“More like a shark tank. I’m not sore about it. If you won’t regret it, then I suppose I don’t need to, either.”

A half-truth, as it were, as Hannibal suddenly  _ does _ regret killing Beverly, if only because he can’t do it now for disgracing Will’s kitchen with eight packets from a ten-count box of Swiss Miss Hot Milk Chocolate.

“It’s really not that bad, Hannibal.”

“You don’t even have milk.”

“Well, I mean, you’re supposed to make it with water.”

“How could anyone call these marshmallows?” Hannibal wonders, staring in horror into the packet of miniature rock-hard lumps he’s just ripped open.

“You’re a pretentious bastard, you know that, right?”

“I cannot help having taste, Will.”

Hannibal wrinkles his nose throughout, but prepares the hot chocolate, anyway. Will accepts it without comment as they sit together in front of the fire, slowly dying as it had been small in the first place. Hannibal takes a sip of his.

“This is terrible,” he says.

“It’s warm,” Will replies. “That’s really all that matters right now.”

They drink together without speaking—there are too many words to spill out now and ruin this lull in their own maelstrom. Once Will has finished his, however, he slides out of his chair to sit next to Hannibal in the floor.

“I’ll never be able to kill you now, you know,” he tells him.

“And why is that, dear Will?”

“Because I’ve been given the chance to see you look disgustingly human, sitting there grimacing through your hot chocolate as if it were poison.”

“I’m not entirely sure it isn’t.”

“Even if it were, to dispose of you now would be heinous. A crime, even.”

“So you no longer wish to kill me?” Hannibal asks.

“I never said that,” Will says with a dangerous smile. “Are you still going to try and eat me?”

“I haven’t decided,” Hannibal admits, “but the odds are increasingly in your favor.”

“So  _ you _ no longer want to kill  _ me?” _

Hannibal echoes, “I never said that.”

“Then why save me from Verger?”

“Because, if you should warrant killing, than only I am allowed to do it.”

Will’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. “I really shouldn’t find that comforting.”

“But you do.”

“Yes.”

Will scoots closer to him, leaning into Hannibal’s space, moving to touch his hair again. Hannibal grabs his wrist before he can. “What are you doing, Will?”

“You were there in Palermo,” Will says. “You know I forgave you. I know you heard me.”

Hannibal sighs, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a nearly imperceptible smile. “I was. I do.” He releases Will’s arm in favor of cupping the side of his face. The motion moves his soul like an aria, merging with the remembrance of Will in his kitchen, Hannibal’s knife deep in his belly, cradling Will as he had ached to do for so long. “I know,” Hannibal says, a finger idly stroking at the scar from his bone saw on Will’s forehead.

“I enjoyed your valentine,” Will tells him. “It was beautiful.”

“Then you have accepted your true nature.”

“I had long before that.” Will closes his eyes and holds Hannibal’s hand closer to his face, leaning into his touch. “I was going to leave with you. I didn’t want to turn you in then, and I still don’t now.”

Hannibal exhales heavily as a sorrowful breath snakes through his lungs. “How could I have possibly known when you had betrayed my trust already?”  _ How could we possibly have come together before this place in time?  _ he says to himself, allowing these few seconds of grief.

“You couldn’t have,” says Will. “I miss Abigail, I grieve her loss daily, but I already thought she was dead. She was only living on borrowed time.”

“She was,” Hannibal concedes.

“So was I, really.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Will inclines his head in agreement. “Some more than others. I guess my only real wish is that I’d had more time to think. That I hadn’t schemed with Jack, or at least had agreed with you sooner, told you what was planned. But then again, I wouldn’t have gotten to see you suffer through mass-manufactured powdered hot chocolate if things had gone differently.”

Hannibal grins in spite of himself, full of teeth, but also a strange joy, a gratefulness for Will’s understanding. “Does this moment mean so much to you?”

“It’s unique,” he says. “Almost normal. Two friends trapped by the snow, sharing warmth and conversation to pass the time until it melts and the outside world bleeds back in.”

“And what will happen then?”

“I imagine we’ll leave.”

“Together?” Hannibal asks skeptically.

“It seems we’re stuck together, inclement weather or not.”

“You never fail to surprise me,” Hannibal says. “I could plan a thousand paths for you, and eventually you would diverge from each and make your own way.”

Will snorts. “I’d need a plow at this point.”

“I meant metaphorically.”

“I’m aware,” says Will. “You’re a wordy asshole, and I’m the little shit with the red pen that edits you.”

Hannibal winces. “I’m not fond of your analogy.”

“Perhaps not, but you are fond of me.”

“Strangely so.”

Hannibal reaches for Will entirely now, pulling his body into his lap. He kisses his mark on Will’s face, prompting Will to pull Hannibal’s hand underneath his shirt to trace the scar on his stomach, and  _ this  _ is the embrace Hannibal has dreamed of since Randall Tier’s body lay on his dining room table. It’s not a shattered teacup, he sees that now; a teacup is made too thoughtfully, too perfect, even when broken and lying in shards. No, it’s a snowball, an accumulation of individual molecules, each meaningful and distinct.

Will kisses the scars on Hannibal’s arms from his crucifixion, a benediction of sorts. He shifts in his arms when he’s finished his blessing and maneuvers his mouth to meet Hannibal’s. The kiss is much gentler than either of their natures, but precisely as profound and intense as Hannibal expected.

He hadn’t anticipated the lingering hint of Swiss Miss in Will’s mouth, but then again, Hannibal knows by now that he shouldn’t anticipate anything going to plan where his Will is involved. Will is a storm all of his own, and Hannibal would weather it always.

“Well,” Will asks when the kiss breaks at last, lips a mere breath apart, “where to after this?”

“Somewhere warm,” Hannibal answers honestly, for now that the ice has broken, he knows that he never wants to see it whole again.

**Author's Note:**

> The accompanying photoset for this fic can be found [here](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/137975022854/swiss-miss-by-shiphitsthefan-hannibalwill). If you liked this story, I would greatly appreciate your reblogging it.
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/). I also chirp occasionally witty things on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan).
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3


End file.
